Entertainment

Jon Stewart's 'Rosewater' Has Humor and Heart, But There Be Thorns

TORONTO — The things that are precisely right with Rosewater, Jon Stewart's first foray into filmmaking, are also the things that make it, ultimately, not an especially entertaining film.

To be fair, Stewart did not take last summer off from hosting The Daily Show to give us a good time at the movies — one hopes he might someday, as it's clear that he possesses talent as a feature film director and is, you know, pretty funny — but rather to shed some light into a dark corner of the world, where journalists can be imprisoned, interrogated, beaten, and even killed for simply bearing witness.

In that respect, Rosewater, which Stewart also wrote, is a success. Any other director might have been tempted to sensationalize the true story of Maziar Bahari, the Iranian/Canadian journalist who was detained for more than 100 days while covering the Iranian elections in 2009. But Stewart, who claims to be "just a comedian" in spite of being one of our generation's finest journalists, despises sensationalism — and in Rosewater, opts instead for realism, humanity, and, yes, deft touches of humor that ultimately save the film.

Rosewater is visually drab and colorless, but it has to be, because it is largely set in a dingy prison cell in Tehran. It's a bit slow, but it has to be, because Bahari's detention lasted for more than 100 days that surely didn't pass briskly. And his treatment is not particularly vicious and can even be oddly tender at times, but it has to be, too, because that's how it was — so it seems from the Stewart's adaptation of Bahari's memoir, "Then They Came for Me."

This is to take nothing away from Bahari's ordeal. To be robbed of your freedom would be torture enough, but add in pointed interrogation, rough physical treatment, humiliation, threat of death, coerced "confessions" and yes, a round beating or two, any among us would have a hard time imagining what that would feel like. Rosewater puts us through these emotional torments, a testament to Gael García Bernal's touching performance as a man who keeps his humor and hope while a couple of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's goons strive daily to break him.

But Bahari is not bloodied or scarred, or tied to a rack, or starved or sleep-deprived or bombarded with flashing lights and heavy metal music — the very things that got the Zero Dark Thirty filmmakers in some hot water for showing onscreen — because in the grand scheme of the Iranian government's treatment of journalists and detractors, Bahari's experience is pretty run-of-the-mill.

And again, this is where Rosewater succeeds: As part of an everyday occurrence, it is believable, it's clear that it's happening with unacceptable frequency, and though it was clearly harrowing for Bahari, he manages to chuckle to himself when, finally secured on the flight home, his seat-mate pulls on a blindfold that looks exactly like the one he was repeatedly made to wear.

It's a great moment, and in fact, nearly all of Rosewater's best moments are the funny ones. Bahari is respectful toward his captors but cannot ignore the absurdity of some of their questions. (At one point, an interrogator gets particularly interested in the idea of American "massage parlors," and Bahari feeds his lurid curiosity with wild, embellished tales of willing girls and happy endings.)

Bahari is not a political crusader — he's just a journalist who was doing his job, and through his own sense of how absurd this all is, strikes a balance between complying with his captors' need to bend him while preserving some sense of integrity. Stewart's choice to have Bahari converse with visions of his father and beloved sister — who were politically inclined, and went through much worse for it — to some degree erodes the plain realism of Rosewater, but there's just enough whimsy in their interactions to keep their presence from completely breaking the spell.

At one point late in his captivity, Bahari is presented with a dubious document to sign that could be the key to his release, but before the official can finish his stern accounting of the gravity of its contents, he has signed it, stamped it and handed it over. It's the equivalent of Indiana Jones pulling his gun in the face of a menacing swordsman, and you absolutely forgive Bahari for it. This was never his fight; he just got caught in the crossfire and wants to go home to his pregnant wife.

Rosewater might've been a more entertaining film in the hands of a more "Hollywood" director, but who knows what kinds of wild embellishments we'd have suffered onscreen: blood, bruises, the sound of dissonant strings, hammy dialogue, sweaty brows — the works. And it certainly would've lacked the grace notes that Stewart laces throughout.

It's impossible not to see Rosewater through the prism of Jon Stewart, who is rightfully beloved for his humanism as much as his comedy — and both are powerful forces here. Walking out of the packed premiere at the Princess of Wales theater on Monday night, it seemed like everyone was a Stewart acolyte, talking rapturously about how his worldview came through onscreen. One has to wonder how different Rosewater would play if no one knew he was behind it.

Stewart takes care of that, however, baking in the moment when Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones interviews Bahari while on assignment in Tehran. Jones plays himself during that fateful interview in a cafe: he blankly calls Bahari a "spy," a moment which his interrogators use against him during his incarceration.

Surely Stewart felt some pangs of guilt about his show's hand in Bahari's arrest, and maybe it even sparked his decision to make Rosewater. But Steweart gets the last laugh — he always does — by using the Iranian officials' tone-deafness about the segment against them.

It went around, it came around, and that has to be satisfying for this first-time filmmaker.

What kind of film would you like to see Stewart tackle next? Let us know in the comments.

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